


Unspoken

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD John, PTSD Sherlock, the dam bursts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:34:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a powerful thing, but it isn't a miracle cure for nightmares and PTSD. John still has them both. So does Sherlock. It's ten days since Manchester, and their relationship moved to the physical. On this night, Sherlock has to wake John from a nightmare; and he tells John about his own. And finally, he finds his words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [那句未曾出口的话](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230137) by [shawnordaisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shawnordaisy/pseuds/shawnordaisy)



> For context, you probably need to read the rest of the series.

Love, John Watson knew, was a magnificent thing. It made dark days brighter; it made bright days almost unbearably glorious. 

Of course, love could be a cruel thing too, when you thought it was lost, before you’d ever had a chance to declare it, but those days were done and now it was tenderness and delight and glory, and all the dark days were lit now with a fire that couldn’t go out.

But glorious and bright, tender and delightful though love was, it wasn’t a miracle cure. It didn’t make the nightmares disappear. Perhaps that was one of the cruel things about love.

Or perhaps it was just synapses and anxiety and the brain being the complex bastard it was.

So even though Sherlock was home and whole and safe, John still had nightmares from time to time. They weren’t all about Sherlock’s fall of course. Afghanistan still claimed its share. Sometimes the two horrors were entwined, and those were appalling nights. But there were few of them now.

In the ten days since Manchester, there’d been none. That wasn’t unusual, though. They’d be absent for weeks; months sometimes. Then suddenly, with less cause than he’d had three days ago, John would wake shivering and keening and afraid. John knew better than to hope they’d vanish entirely just because he was stupidly happy in his waking hours.

*

Three days after the fire at Bigelow’s house, Sherlock woke to the sound of John whimpering in his sleep.

John’s body, Sherlock saw, was rigid – legs and arms ramrod straight, head thrown back and throat bared, tendons straining, while John’s hands and teeth were both clenched. John looked like he was trying to move but couldn’t, and his body was shuddering with the strange and unnecessary effort. His face was a mask of anguish.

The whimper grew to a high pitched keening.

He was crying.

Sherlock moved to wake him up, but halted, remembering that there was a protocol for this. John had been very careful about informing Sherlock of the protocol not long after they had first moved into Baker Street together, when John realised that Sherlock knew about his nightmares.

“Don’t just come in and wake me up,” John had warned, “I sometimes wake up swinging because I’m still in the nightmare. I don’t want to accidentally break your nose or choke you to death because my subconscious thinks you’re an armed insurgent. Stand out of arm’s reach, at the door or the side of the bed, and call me by my name until you’re sure I’m conscious. Be as loud as you need to. Talk to me if you like, though I may not answer, and don’t come up to me unless I say it’s okay. And once I’m awake, you don’t have to hang around. I’d rather you didn’t, actually.”

Maybe the last part didn’t count now. Sherlock would decide on the appropriate response once John was awake.

Sherlock slipped out of their bed, stood on the far side of it and said: “John.” 

There was no reaction. John continued shivering; the keening became a high, hitching moan, and John’s cheeks and temples were wet, tracked with tears.

John almost never cried, Sherlock knew, and the few occasions he’d seen it were moments of extreme trauma. (Except that night in Manchester, which was extreme emotion. John was happy, then. These, now, were not happy tears. This was trauma.)

“John,” Sherlock repeated, louder, and then again: “ _John_ ”, and again, several times, louder each time, until he barked urgently: “ ** _John! Wake up!_** ”

John’s eyes flew open. He was panting for breath, each exhale a soft wail of distress. His eyes were open but he was still staring at whatever had moments before been playing out in his mind. His hand shot out to Sherlock’s side of the bed as his head turned, his fingers convulsively twitching in their frantic, scrabbling search. When nothing met his hand, he lurched across the mattress, desperately afraid, until he saw Sherlock standing by the bed.

“You! You’re here!”

Sherlock started to say _obviously_ , but stopped, because John still looked lost and shocked. He looked a little like he did on the day, just over a year ago, when Sherlock intercepted him at his poky, nasty flat and revealed he wasn’t really dead.

Sherlock opted for the comfortingly obvious. “Yes, John. I’m here.”

John was still breathing heavily, every inhale a sharp, shaking thing, every exhale a barely restrained sob. He scrabbled across the bed to Sherlock, reaching up hesitantly. Then he stopped, hand upraised, staring at Sherlock like he was a mirage, and not yet a miracle.

Sherlock was absolutely not going to leave the room as John had once advised, nor wait for permission to approach. He swooped down, knelt on the mattress and made himself small as he pulled John to him. He tucked his long body into a curl, which he wound tightly around John’s torso, long arms meeting at his back, long legs folded underneath him so they kneeled thigh-to-thigh, chest-to-chest, his head burrowed under John’s chin so that his own warm breath puffed on John’s skin.

John reacted as Sherlock hoped – his arms clutched around Sherlock’s body and crushed him close, making him tangible, present, real. The sob-sigh drawing of John’s breath got worse for a moment, as John buried his nose in Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock could feel John trying to kiss his skin, but John’s mouth was still tight with distress; the kisses weren’t soft and sensuous, but stiff, desperate.

John’s hands shifted to explore Sherlock’s skull, to lift his face up into the dim light flowing in from the street. Sherlock submitted to the not-quite-rough handling, letting John ascertain that there were no broken bones, no wounds, no blood. John checked carefully and then kissed his head, those hard, fearful kisses, before crushing Sherlock close to him again.

“You fell. You jumped. You died. You left me,” he said in a tumble, and then, embarrassed, “God. Sorry, sorry, I know you didn’t… I… I… don’t mean…”

“I won’t leave you,” Sherlock said, firmly and gently and with absolute conviction, “Never again. I promise.”

It didn’t have the desired effect.

“Not even if you think you have to. Not even if you can’t think of anything else. Don’t leave me again. Not like that. Not ever. Don’t leave.” John’s hands squeezed Sherlock convulsively, fearfully.

And once more Sherlock felt the weight of that decision, and what it had done to John. What it did to Sherlock himself was neither here nor there. Sherlock chose it. John hadn’t had a choice.

Sherlock clasped John close and willed his body to submit entirely to John’s frantic grip. “I’m so sorry, John.”

“Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You jumped.”

Sherlock couldn’t hold John any closer if he tried, but he tried anyway. “I’m so sorry.”

He was stroking John’s hair and waiting for the trembling to subside, although right now he didn’t know how much of the shaking was his own.

“You’re not so sorry you wouldn’t do it again,” said John in a small voice. It wasn’t accusatory. More resigned.

“That’s not…” _true_ , Sherlock began. But it was. In a way. Sherlock nudged his nose against John’s face, kissed it, and tried to clarify.

“I think about it often,” he confessed, “I keep looking at the data, trying to see how I could have done it differently. But every other scenario ends the same way or worse. Even if I could somehow save Lestrade and Mrs Hudson, you would be dead. Or I would be, no fakery this time. Or both of us, or all of us would be.  I’m not sorry for what I did back then, because there was nothing else to do; well, except to die, or see you die.  I am sorry for what it cost you.” Sherlock swallowed. “I can’t reconcile those things. I’d have spared you anything, unless it led to your death. Moriarty would have murdered you, John, whether or not he killed me. And I couldn’t allow it. I’m not sorry about that part.”

His hand rubbed up and down John’s back. _Words,_ he thought, _useless things. Never adequate for anything **important.**_

“I know you’re not,” said John, but once more, there was no accusation in the tone. Sadness, perhaps, and a measure of acceptance. His arms were still wrapped around Sherlock and his breathing steadied, but Sherlock could feel the resigned sorrow in every muscle, every bone, every pore against his skin.

If Sherlock knew how to fix it, how to make it _not true_ , _not have happened_ , he would. For all his genius, sometimes Sherlock simply had no idea what to say, let alone how to say it. He thought sometimes that John understood the decision he’d made, and at other times he thought that John had no clue at all. No idea of the alternatives that Sherlock had imagined. Sherlock had a terrifyingly good imagination. Terrifyingly.

Perhaps if John knew about Sherlock’s own dreams, it would set a context for understanding. John knew the power of nightmares, even when you knew the nightmare wasn’t true. (Although John’s were. John had actually watched him jump. _He_ did that. He did _that_ to the person he professed to love. He did it _because_ he loved him. It was a paradox.)

Telling John about his own dreams might be a good thing, or it might be a terrible thing. Sherlock didn’t know.

Words, John had said. _We are shite at the hidden signals. Let’s go for words._

So Sherlock went for words, inadequate as they were.

“While I was gone,” he said, his head resting on John’s shoulder, where he could watch the beat of John’s pulse in John’s throat, “I didn’t sleep often. Too dangerous to be so unguarded. When I could snatch a few hours, my sleep was… all nightmares. All of failing. Of you dying. Shot in the head. Stabbed. Suffocated. Drowned. Crushed. Tortured and dismembered. Brainwashed. Broken. Thrown, still breathing, to dogs. All the ways Moriarty and Moran could have invented for you to die, I saw them. All of them. The hours I spent, waking up after those dreams, hacking in to London security systems to make sure they weren’t true were ridiculous. Excruciating. Illogical and time wasting. But there were days I couldn’t move until I knew for certain that you lived.”

John shifted away and Sherlock thought: _ah, mistake, not good. I shouldn’t have said it. It is not the same thing as John’s nightmares at all. Mine were borne of pre-emptive anxiety fed in part by crimes I witnessed perpetrated on others. John’s come from actual life experiences._

But John was stroking his hair and face. All he said was: “Waking up alone is sometimes worse than the nightmares. They can feel so real when we’re alone without anyone to show us they’re not. I’m glad we don’t have to do that anymore.”

John understood after all. Of course he did. _Marvellous John_.

“I wouldn’t change the past, John – any other choice killed you. And it’s moot, because I _can’t_. But I _can_ promise you: never again. I couldn’t. I know what it costs now, and I couldn’t. If I ever have to go away, I’ll take you with me. Come to that, I’ll… I’ll go to Mycroft for help. Or I’ll retire, get out of all this, and we’ll go together to live in the countryside. I will not _ever_ leave you again.”

And Sherlock knew it was true. It was more true than anything else he’d ever known about himself.

“I love you, John,” he said, and that was truer still.

And so simple. So simple and so true, three inadequate words, but they held a world in them after all, if the radiance in John’s eyes was to be believed. Insufficient and imprecise, except they held every meaning of _I love you_ within them. Every single one, and he meant every single one of those meanings too.

He kissed John’s mouth. “I love you.” The words tasted perfect, spilling from his tongue at last.

He kissed John’s left cheek. “I love you.” And his right. “I love you.”

He kissed John’s jaw and his temples and his nose and his ears, and his forehead, and the ridges of his eyes, and the crown of his head, and his eyelids, and his throat, and his mouth again, starting over, and between each kiss he said: “I love you.”

He said it and said it, his voice growing thick, and he couldn’t stop himself. It was compulsive and by this point unnecessary - the tenth repetition, the fifteenth, now the twentieth – and he couldn’t stop saying it, he couldn’t stop the flow of love for this man, or those stupid words, so small, so simple, that could not possibly be enough, they could not _possibly_ convey the depth and breadth and texture and roar of all of the feeling, _all of this tumultuous feeling_ that was emotion and thought and reason and meaning and impulse and everything and _all of it_.

Sherlock could list a hundred logical reasons why he loved John Watson - _he is invaluable to my work; he is a doctor, he offers intelligent alternative perspectives no matter how wrong they are; he is good with people and therefore elicits different and sometimes more useful responses from them; he is a crack shot –_ and twice a hundred more reasons borne of pure emotion - _his laugh makes me laugh; the disarray of his hair when suddenly awoken makes me want to pet him; his dreadful typing makes me want to bite his fingers and then kiss them; the way he wiggles his toes to mark the time to brew our morning tea will one day have me on my knees to kiss them_.

 _I love you_ was so inadequate to express every reason, but all he had was those inadequate words; so he had to say them and say them and say them to express the fraction of the whole.

He was still saying them when John’s mouth closed over his, swallowing _I love you_ up in a kiss that began with that hard line of too much emotion, then softened into the sensuous heat that said that this, _just this_ , kissing Sherlock Holmes with absolute, devoted attention, was the best and most wonderful use of his time for the next hundred years, and John Watson intended to do that, to kiss him and kiss him, for every minute of those years, and it would be enough, it would be food and water and oxygen and it would absolutely be enough.

And it was enough for Sherlock, too. Kissing John. For a hundred years. A thousand.

A year ago, waking up back in London, knowing John was alive, that was enough. John wounded to the soul, hurt and angry and not speaking to him, but alive to draw breath to curse him, that was enough.

Then the fragile bridge of their friendship being rebuilt; John in his nasty flat, and then in Mayfair, but once more his friend. That had been enough, too.

And then having John back home at Baker Street, nearby and loving him even if they never touched skin to skin, that was enough.

And then Manchester. Ten days ago. Manchester, and kissing and touching and sometimes orgasms, but mostly this. John by his side when he awoke. John, to touch and hold. John, to whom he could declare his love. This was enough, and so much more than Sherlock had ever expected.

They were still kneeling together on the mattress, arms wrapped tight, kissing ( _oh, the epic kissing_ ). John was the first to draw back – Sherlock would have held to him for hours, yet – and nudged Sherlock’s nose with his own.

“You still have those dreams, you know. I heard you, in your room, when I moved back home. Crying my name. I… if I heard, I’d stand at your door and say your name to wake you up. You’d open your eyes, but you never seemed really awake. You wouldn’t even look at me. But then you’d lay back down and go back to sleep, and I’d close the door and go.” 

“I know.” Sherlock nudged back. “I heard you. I saw you. The relief on waking to see you was… shattering. I didn’t know then that I could have asked you to come in.”

John smiled and planted a quick, light kiss on Sherlock’s mouth. “You haven’t had that dream this week. Not since Manchester. Where you dreamed I was a mermaid.” Another smile.

“Mer _man_ ,” Sherlock corrected automatically, “And I did have it. After the fire. You were so exhausted you never woke up. But I did. And there you were, next to me. Safe. So I went back to sleep.”

John nodded. “It’ll probably never go away completely.” He stroked Sherlock’s hair. “That’s how these things go, unfortunately.  And so I don’t think that I’ll ever stop having that nightmare about you either, Sherlock.”

“I know,” said Sherlock, and he sounded devastated, that he couldn’t solve it, the problem of that terrible memory he’d given to John and couldn’t take back.

“They’re just dreams,” John said, gently, “My brain can’t forget it. That doesn’t mean it’s unforgiven.”

“John.”

“Just… you can’t do that to me again.”

“No, I can’t,” Sherlock agreed. He bent his head to press his face into John’s throat again, to feel that steady, purposeful pulse against his skin. “I can’t. I couldn’t. I won’t. Ever, John. Not ever again.”

John kissed Sherlock’s hair. “Come on, honeybee. Back under the sheets.”

Sherlock was reluctant to move. It was not entirely comfortable, kneeling and wrapped around each other like this, but it was _comfort_. But he was aware that John was getting cold, which would make his shoulder ache.  So Sherlock toppled them both down and wriggled, keeping John in his arms as much as possible while stretching out under the sheets. John was laughing by the end of the exercise, turning the near desperation of not-letting-go into something much more like a game, and making Sherlock laugh too.

John pulled blankets up to their shoulders and snuggled up close, draping one leg over Sherlock’s, resting his cheek on Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock’s arm curved around him, held a little tight at first, before calmness returned. Their breathing evened out, the tension ebbed and dissipated.

“Thanks for not getting yourself killed while you were gone,” John said, hand resting on Sherlock’s diaphragm, his fingers flexing slightly against the skin.

“And you, likewise.”

“Working at the clinic and dating people I couldn’t do more than not-actually-hate wasn’t really that perilous.”

“Nevertheless.”

John kissed Sherlock’s chest. “Sherlock.”

“Yes, John?”

“I love you too.”

“In spite of everything?” suggested Sherlock, perfectly seriously.

“No, you git. I just love you. Maybe even because of everything.”

Sherlock shifted a little so that he could hold John fractionally closer. “Just as well. You’re stuck with me now. I’m never leaving you again. You couldn’t make me go away, even if you wanted me to.”

“Guess that’s the end of my attempts to make you go out for the milk.”

“Oh John,” Sherlock smiled and nuzzled John’s hair, “You’ve never been able to make me do that.”

John giggled and relaxed still further.

Slowly, Sherlock drifted into sleep.

John stayed awake for a while afterwards, his head pillowed on Sherlock, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

Breathing.

Unbloodied and unbroken.

Here, here, here in his arms.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unspoken [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6651892) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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